Word: bangladesh
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...results were overwhelming. The Awami League, led by former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, won a staggering 230 of parliament's 299 seats. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party - led by another former prime minister, Khaleda Zia, who has often faced off against Sheikh Hasin over the years - was reduced to 27. With its allies, the Awami League will have a commanding 262-seat majority...
...landslide reminded Awami League supporters of the party's huge win in the 1970 poll, another pivotal election. Bangladesh was still East Pakistan; when West Pakistan refused to accept the result a brutal military crackdown followed and, eventually, the 1971 war of independence. That isn't the case now. The military has accepted the voters' verdict, which was delivered as 200,000 local and international election observers looked on, although the opposition has raised objections to what it says are voting irregularities...
...Muslim nation." Although almost 85% of its people follow Islam and despite regular intervals of authoritarian rule, Bangladeshis point out that the nation was born out of a popular movement of students and political activists who came together to fight for a secular democracy. (See pictures of Bangladesh and Pakistan's forgotten...
...crimes committed during the 1971 struggle. The symbolic low point came this fall, when several Islamist groups pulled down a memorial to the student movement near the airport - they called it "un-Islamic"- and threatened to tear down the Shahid Minar, a series of connected marble pillars that is Bangladesh's equivalent of the Statue of Liberty and the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial. Jamaat contested in 39 parliamentary seats but won only 2, down from 17 in the last polls. "It is amazing," says Sreeradha Datta, a research fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis in New Delhi...
...League has promised not just a trial of suspected 1971 war criminals, but also relief from soaring inflation, expanded agricultural subsidies, equitable economic growth and - just for good measure - a check on jihadi groups. Despite the resounding defeat of Jamaat, militants operating in the border areas between India and Bangladesh are still a significant threat, says Ataur Rahman, chairman of the Bangladesh Political Science Association. Sheikh Hasina will need the full cooperation of the military to control them, but it isn't yet clear how much leverage she will have over the Army and intelligence services, who have used...